St. Paul police add Tasers to school patrols

Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune | February 4 2005

There's something different about officer Julie Maidment this week. She's still doing the same job, protecting St. Paul, Minn., Highland Park High School as its school resource officer. She's still chatty and easy with a smile, more likely to talk kids away from trouble than to punish them.

But if you look closer, you see it - that small, bright yellow weapon on the left side of her equipment belt. On Monday, Tasers made their first appearance in Minnesota schools on the belts of St. Paul officers.

St. Paul police are putting Tasers in the schools, not as a response to any problems but as part of their ongoing effort to train and equip all their officers with the weapon, said officer Paul Schnell, a department spokesman. St. Paul police began outfitting officers with Tasers in February 2004.

Police in schools from Arizona to North Carolina, Indiana to Florida, now carry Tasers on the job. In some communities around the country, the weapon has sparked debate over whether police should ever use it on kids. In Miami, two recent Taser incidents involving school kids, including one 6-year-old boy who was cutting himself with glass, have prompted Miami-Dade County schools to reexamine policies regarding Taser use.

"When you first hear about this, you think, 'Holy smoke, is Captain Kirk going to be blowing people away?' " said Bill Dunn, a longtime St. Paul school administrator and principal of Arlington High School. "But then you realize, these things are used by highly trained professionals who have a great deal of accountability in how they're going to use it."

Police say it's a non-lethal addition to their arsenal, a way to enforce order without causing serious injury.

The rationale: The weapon gives police a way to quickly restrain or disarm someone before they can do harm to themselves or others.

John Lane, whose daughter Gretchen attends Highland Park, said he'd heard nothing about the Tasers until Gretchen mentioned it. That bothers him, he said. "The school board should have told us something," he said.

But he said Tasers in the hands of the police don't bother him. "If they're carrying guns anyway, I would prefer they use the Taser instead of their real gun if it comes to that."

In fact, said Sgt. Paul Strong, who supervises school resource officers, Tasers make sense in schools. Imagine, he said, that a fight breaks out and a crowd of kids gathers. Officers would be limited in what they could do. A swinging nightstick could hurt a bystander; chemical irritant spreads out and could choke dozens of other kids. A Taser, Strong said, hits the person it's aimed at, immobilizing them and no one else. And, he said, that bright yellow gun certainly has a deterrent effect.

"It should be able to calm situations down quicker," Strong said.

Maidment, who totes a pistol, telescoping nightstick and chemical irritant in her belt around school all day, said it's just another tool for police to use if the situation calls for it. But developing relationships with kids is the most frequent tool, she said.

"This isn't like on the streets, where you respond to calls and react to crime," she said, while visiting with students in the Highland Park cafeteria. "In the schools, you're always being proactive. You get to do a lot of educating, hanging out with kids."